A Mars Without Gondolas
by The Carnivorous Muffin
Summary: After choosing his own life over the wellbeing of his world, the fused Ring and Lily, come across Lily's doppelganger and a man achingly similar to Death in the barren wastelands of Mars. Crossover of "Bright Eyes" and "The Wasteland"


**Author's Note: For those about to proceed two warnings. One, this is a crossover of "The Wasteland" and "Bright Eyes" and while events of "Bright Eyes" and "The Wasteland" are mostly passed over, it's good to have familiarity lest you be confused. Second, this is obviously NOT CANON for so many reasons.**

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" _I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened."_

" _So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. There are other forces at work in this world Frodo, besides the will of evil. Bilbo was meant to find the Ring. In which case, you were also meant to have it. And that is an encouraging thought."_

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"Well, this certainly isn't London," A young effeminate man, or perhaps a young handsome woman, with rose gold hair and eyes like leaves on the edge of fall, the edge of their irises just beginning to bleed into red and gold, stared up from a great frozen dune of red sand, out into the night sky and towards the two moons standing vigil over the world.

The Martian moons did not respond, and instead, the being which wasn't Lily but wasn't quite the Ring, found themselves listening for the echoes of that distant song of creation that the Valar had once used to shape all that he had ever known.

But this universe did not sing, Lily had said as much, and in its vast overwhelming silence, in its infinite horizon and trajectory, it was so much more grand and terrifying than his own had been. Sauron, here, Morgath even, would be little more than a speck of dust in the eye of God.

Their eyes drifted, fell upon a bright almost blue star, one which wasn't a star at all but instead Earth, Lily's home world, yet at this distance he could not make out its oceans, mountains, storms, valleys, or peoples.

And now, standing in this barren desert, so far from everything either had ever known, they felt…

( _"Like I'd been through the desert on a horse with no name,"_ Lily whispered inside of their shared consciousness.)

"Hey!" They turned and found themselves… They looked down, inspecting themselves, making sure they were still one being and hadn't been separated, but no it was still they and not he yet, but all the same standing across from them was a grinning, barefoot, Lily.

Well, not quite, this one was older than his Lily, a maiden instead of a girl child on the verge of maidenhood, dressed in clothing unfamiliar to her, and more… There was some edge of steel that this Lily lacked when compared to his, some new carefree ephemeral attitude which clung to her, she lacked the bitter irritation that seemed to plague his own Lily at every opportunity. She was… almost hobbit like, in her enthusiasm and innocence, and they weren't sure what to make of that.

"How…" they started but the doppelganger was already stepping forward, her grin growing impossibly wider.

"Dad said he'd never run across any aliens, but I knew they had to be around here somewhere, Fermi paradox be damned." She moved inspected them casually, walking about them in a circle, "Although, you do look strangely human, alarmingly human all considered."

They felt the words, the scar, begin to burn themselves more brightly into their pale shared skin, indicating the nervousness, dread, and annoyance that was coursing through them in that silent shared dialogue they had in this form.

"I'm not."

"Human?" the other Lily asked with raised eyebrows, "Well, of course not, you're a Martian. Although, I suppose if Martians colonized earth at one point, then it would make sense that we share some genetic factors in common."

"No, I am… That is, we are…" They sighed, more or less giving up, not entirely sure how to say what either of them meant by this, but the other Lily didn't seem to care as she grabbed their hand and pulled them along.

"Come on, I'm going to rub this in dad's face. He swore nothing would be here, not for centuries, but I knew that it couldn't just be a frozen wasteland."

"I'm not a Martian," this time something of Lily bled through them, her short and often tried patience, but the other Lily seemed to pay it no mind at all as she waved her arms and called out.

"Dad! I found an alien!"

They came around the corner of a great red Dune and found themselves walking in on a picnic (again, strangely hobbit-like with its simple comforts in a place as foreboding as this), a blanket spread across the frozen earth, a basket overflowing with food, and two cups of tea emitting steam into the night.

(Bilbo had had tea sets like that, fine sets of china he had stolen back from his relatives after returning from that first adventure… He wondered, if one day, Frodo would inherit them.)

And something in them, in Lily, froze at the sight because sitting there on the blanket was a man, one with the pallor and air of the Valar to him, something unseen and otherworldly that had no business on mortal soil, but to Lily he resonated more profoundly than even that.

Because in him, in Death, she also saw her father.

"Uncle Death?!"

Or, well, apparently her uncle.

The man blinked, blinked again, opened his mouth, while the other Lily's eyes darted back and forth between them, finally, Lily asked, "Dad… Did you have some Martian brother I never heard about?"

"What are you…" they motioned to him, utterly flabbergasted by his presence, and then to the picnic blanket, "You mean you could enter the mortal realm any time you bloody wanted?!"

"I…" the man stopped, paused, but already they were tearing out their combined hair. Because here was a man who should have been there, who seemed to have no qualms being there for this other mysterious Lily, but who had never once indicated that he could be anywhere for her.

"Oh, that is…" they trailed off, scoffed, then continued running a hand through burning hair, feeling themselves grow hotter and hotter beneath the force of their combined ire, "That is just horseshit, uncle. Do you have any idea what's happened while you weren't looking? Where do I even begin? Well, our… Lily's, dimension may have exploded, or been eaten by Rabbit, so that's a plus. Lily just spent over a year trooping around some parallel dimension with a magical ring, resulting in my conception while we're at it, on a giant quest to save the world which we technically didn't even do… And where were you during all of this?! Hell, where were you during Hogwarts?"

And then, suddenly, the ire dimmed and the words of prophecy along with them.

For here was a man wearing the flesh of a god, a man who did not know them, did not have hint of recognition within the shadows of his eyes. Whatever man they were screaming at… He had long since vanished into oblivion.

"My apologies," they said softly, bowing their heads before these people, "I mistook you for someone else."

"Ah," he said simply, looking quite baffled but strangely entertained by their outburst, and this seemed hauntingly and bitterly familiar to them, "That has never happened to me before."

"Would you like a seat?" the man offered, and startled but trying not to let it show, they nodded and sat themselves down across from him, taking the cup of tea he produced out of thin air with a small bitterly nostalgic smile.

It was just like him to offer them tea.

"But you are a Martian, right?" the other Lily asked with raised eyebrows as she watched them sip from the cup, "That's the important bit."

They were torn between feeling a little insulted and a little amused, finally, picking and choosing their words, they decided to settle on what was more or less honest, "No, but I am from a world known as Arda, rather than your Earth."

"Arda being another term for Mars, right?" Lily asked, before pausing, "Arda… Where have I heard that word before?"

"No, I am in exile," they supplied shortly, "We… I was given an ultimatum, for the sake of my world. I could stay, and be sacrificed and martyred, or leave and curse them for all eternity with the weakened plague I have left for them. I… I did not wish to die."

For Sauron could only be staved off for so long, he would always hunger and covet for the land now, and when they had discovered the truth of him, even after beating back the eastern armies along with the western, they had concluded, with that terrible haunting truth, that for the good of Middle Earth, the ring must be destroyed.

It was Lily, at the edge of the pit of Mount Doom, that place of his birth and his eventual demise, who presented the other, shameful, option they could take.

Sauron would never be destroyed, not truly, so long as the Ring survived. In choosing exile, he had cursed Middle Earth for all eternity with Sauron's undying spirit. ( _"A plague, a plague upon both your houses…"_ Lily had muttered when he'd taken her hand) But he had wanted to live, more than he had wanted the rolling hills of Middle Earth and all the peoples who dwelled there, he had wanted to live.

"I too am in exile," Death said, and in his eyes, so very like Lily's, there was a bleak understanding, that he had sat where they were sitting now, that he had stared out into the barren void of space and wondered how the mute stars burned so very pale.

"It is… He will never be what he was, without us, but he has the power to raise armies still, and they will need to beat him back constantly. All the same, they will curse my name for millennia to come, I am certain of it." Yes, his and Lily's they would curse, for too many they would almost be the same thing at this point.

But he did not regret it, could not regret having chosen to live, to see the wonders of the world, of Lily's world, for himself. More… As he'd stared across at her, at the very end, at how she'd reached her hand towards him, he'd known that his own flight into death could very well break her.

That just as Isildur had broken in the face of the Ring's destruction she would do the very same.

(She had so very few, precious, friends in her world.)

And besides, he had realized something then, the great truth of the world was that there was no true Lord of the Ring, and in taking her hand then he had cemented that truth for even the greatest fools who would refuse to believe it.

The Ring was treacherous even to himself.

After all, he had cursed Sauron just as much as he had cursed the rest of them.

"You know, we had a similar sort of quest not too long ago," the other Lily mentioned off hand, "Well, a few years back now, but dad and I helped Regulus Black on his quest to destroy the seven true rings in the fires of Mount Doom. Except, ours ended a little differently, we ended up destroying Sauron after all."

They blinked, blinked again, in their hand the teacup shattered beneath the pressure of their fingers, golden blood began to ooze from cuts caused by the porcelain and hot tea gushed down to stain the fabric of their trousers.

For even here, in the barren wastelands of space, they hungered for his annihilation.

The words, ever present, carved themselves once again into their skin.

Only to be snuffed out as they realized, staring at the pair who were looking at them with raised eyebrows, that they had no idea the truth of what they'd just said. It'd been… It'd been a horrifically apt metaphor.

Some cosmic joke.

"Ah, ha, yes… Well, I suppose there is no Lord of the Rings then, is there?" They spluttered, fixing the cup with a wave of their hand and then drinking from it again, "That is… I'm sure quite a tale."

"…Well, not that interesting of a tale," Lily conceded, still with raised eyebrows, "It really was a sort of, came, conquered, left sort of a thing."

"Well, we did not destroy Sauron, if that's what you wanted to know." They admitted, stiffly, but all the same both appeared to treat it as an absurd metaphor rather than the cold solid reality, that they had failed to kill Sauron and they had denied anyone else the opportunity to do so.

"Our Mr. Baggins… He was not capable of disposing of our dark lord," Death commented, "It fell to me instead and I almost did not do it myself. That was not the role I was meant to play after all."

"Yet, you still played it." They said softly to this, looking in the man's eyes, and then, in that moment, he seemed to see them both for what they truly were.

"Sometimes, sometimes you must play the roles you were never meant to, because they are perhaps the truest role of all. None of us is the playwright just as none of us is the Lord of the Rings."

And perhaps, lurking in that mixed metaphor, was their answer. That he could, had, stepped beyond the parameters and boundaries handed to him and that perhaps in doing so he had become the exact thing that he had been destined to be from the very beginning.

After all, what did the Valar truly know of fate? There was no song in this new universe of his and thus the symphony was endless in its possibility.

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 **Author's Note: Written for the 200th review of "The Wasteland" by darkflare75, ages ago, but hey I finally got around to this, who asked for a crossover of "Bright Eyes" and "The Wasteland", granted I think more derp was expected but... eh, they can discuss hobbits on their own time.**

 **Thanks for reading, reviews are much appreciated.**

 **Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings**


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